Costello's Radetzky March

Peter Costello furiously denies wanting to re-enter Parliament, and rightly so. The whole thing has made him look like an amateur. If he was going to do it, he'd be in a press conference with the MP who was going to cede their safe seat to him, smirking. For the media it would be a complete bolt from the blue, as all big game-changer stories are; someone like the witless Katharine "I'd love to write about policy but ooh, shiny shiny leadershit" Murphy would never have got wind of it.

Costello might dream of Kooyong for its Menzies legacy, and certainly the wish to rid Australian politics of Josh Frydenberg is admirable if premature. If you're going to get into the House of Representatives you need to focus on one seat; I knew the push for Costello was non-existent when Heather Ewart, on last night's 7.30 Report, started rattling off the names of Melbourne seats where he might run, including knocking off his former staffers Kelly O'Dwyer and Tony Smith.

Costello relied utterly on Michael Kroger to do the bastard work of knocking off incumbent MPs and getting preselection. He outflanked Kroger by building up his staffers to take positions in Parliament: first Tony Smith replaced the retiring Michael Wooldridge in Casey, then Mitch Fifield went to the Senate, and before long the Victorian Liberals began to resemble Costello's personal fiefdom. For Costello to do over his own proteges would undo the work of a generation.

If Costello really wanted to mess with Abbott, he would have chosen two seats either side of Kooyong, and his old stamping ground of Higgins:

• Goldstein is held by Andrew Robb. Robb wants to be Finance Minister, and his ideas on economic policy regularly differ from those of Abbott and Hockey. Robb was a successful Federal Director of the Liberal Party, in contrast to the incumbent, who is married to Abbott's chief of staff, who drops Robb off invitation lists for meetings on economic policy ... a challenge from Costello would clarify things for Robb. Either he'd pack it in, or he'd fight for it (and to do that he'd need to cosy up to Abbott's office).
• Menzies is held by Kevin Andrews. In prestige terms holding the seat named after Menzies would be the next best alternative to the one he actually represented. Andrews was a plodder at best and a menace at worst (and his worst, with Haneef and the 457 visas, was very bad indeed). Andrews is the Liberal Party's ambassador to the court of Labor conservative Joe de Bruyn; not since Billy Hughes has a trade unionist been so intimately involved in conservative politics in this country, and de Bruyn has done it all without having to give up his powerbase in the ALP or do demeaning publicity work. Andrews helps keep Abbott consistent, as far as the right are concerned; knock off Andrews and you kick a support strut out from a leader who will have to be replaced anyway. There is almost no way Andrews would go quietly.

There is a third option. It would involve a bit of rustication for Costello, and place him closer to Canberra. Apparently, the incumbent has a weakness for superannuated ex-barristers ...

Costello would be unlikely to lower himself to the unusual position taken before Queensland's recent election by his current employer, Premier Campbell Newman, and run for a Labor-held marginal while campaigning as leader from outside Parliament. Newman got along well with LNP powerbrokers and was prepared to do their bidding; Costello is unlikely to take riding orders from Loughnane, Minchin, Cormann et al, or chance his arm in somewhere like Corangamite (toward which he'd share the patronising tone of this article) or LaTrobe. Even if the Prime Ministership was in the offing, he'd want a less precarious ride to the Lodge.

There was a time when a safe seat in Victoria was the best option from which to lead the Liberal Party, and from there the government. From 1949 (when Menzies led the Liberals into office) to 1983 (when Fraser lost) Victoria contributed more than any other state to the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. The Victorians took candidate selection much more seriously, and with a view to providing cabinet-level quality in safer seats, than other states.

McMahon was treated as an aberration in his time, but in hindsight he was a harbinger. By the time Howard came to office NSW provided a majority of his MPs, but still his cabinets featured a Victorian plurality: Costello, Reith, Alston. Howard competed with and was compared to a state government that rivalled his for energy, initiative, and scope of reform. Howard managed the decline of the Vics and South Australians over time and gathered around him those from other jurisdictions whom he could trust: that's why Petro Georgiou never served our country as a minister, but Santo Santoro did.

During this mid-to-late Howard period Michael Kroger and/or Jeff Kennett might have stepped up to restore their state at the heart of national affairs, but they chose otherwise. Hopefully the fate of their respective AFL clubs have made up for what they missed out on politically.

After the turn of the century Melbourne became dormant as a centre for new money, ideas or personnel for the Liberal Party. Just when Costello needed his power base to rally and push him toward the Prime Ministership, it let him down.

In 2010 the Victorians fell to third place in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, behind NSW (which held its own) and Queensland. SA and Tasmania provided MPs who readily accepted the assumptions of the Melburnians, having been educated and done business in that city; Minchin and Abetz have ensured there are as few such representatives as possible. The Liberal vote in Victoria, in itself and relative to the rest of the nation, is in longterm decline.

State government gave Labor the confidence to match it with the Liberals in Victoria, only to find the Liberals withering and retreating within themselves, which has emboldened Labor. It has increased its vote in Victoria at every election since 2004 and has not yet fallen apart over its loss of state government. If Labor continue their advance in Victoria Costello's would-be power base will be weaker than it is already.

One luncheon in a crass and glitzy hotel in Perth or Brisbane would provide more support for the Liberals' federal campaign than a year's worth of subtle fundraising from within the Melbourne Club. You'd learn more about today's Liberal Party tooling around with Clive Palmer in his G6 than you ever could have hoped from claret and boiled mutton with Sir Magnus Cormack. This should illustrate how delusional the Victorian Liberal born-to-rule assumption truly is, but it doesn't.

Even so, it's hard to blame the current crop of Victorian Liberal MPs for thinking that way. With the exception of Helen Kroger, all have worked as senior staffers for senior ministers and been part of policy development at a high level from a young age. The sorts of careers that Costello and Liberals from previous eras built their parliamentary careers upon - business, grazing, law - would represent a step backwards career-wise from where those people had been before 2007. They find themselves in character-building mode, biding their time and cutting their teeth behind lags from the Howard government desperate for another go-around (e.g. both Bishops, Andrews), Howard Restorationists who were never really part of the Howard government and know precious little about how government actually works (most MPs/Senators from Queensland and WA), and yobs from Sydney who wouldn't care if the entire city of Melbourne slid into the Bay (Hockey, Turnbull, Abbott).

Costello, and his former colleague Peter Reith, were not only born too late in the wrong state. They represent a failure in the new-model politician. Traditionally politics was an occupation taken up by Liberals in middle age, after reputation and financial stability had been achieved, and children raised and educated; political careers ended in old age, with varying degrees of achievement, and were followed by a short retirement before death and a minute's silence on the floor of the house.

Malcolm Fraser was the first modern politician to suffer the end of his political career in his early 50s, where good works and corporate boards provided less than a full-time occupation and engagement. Costello and Reith are in the same position now. They raise their profile because they've been conditioned to do it for so long that anything else is dull or anathema. Neither man's life is so narrowed by the advancing years that pruning roses, quaffing with the chaps at the Melbourne Club or dandling grandchildren on creaking knees is enough to make their lives full and complete.

The idea that you can start your career in public affairs in parliament, first as a staffer then a member, representing numerous people with vaguely defined interests before moving on to lucrative careers where you represent the more clearly defined interests of fewer people, is clearly a mirage. Nick Greiner is the only politician who has done it, with Bob Carr a close second, but both men have been drawn back into the public carnival to get what they deeply need. Hundreds of intelligent, ambitious and well-educated people are devoting their lives toward that mirage, shaping the way we are governed for better or worse along the way.

Peter Costello has more economic policy credibility than Gillard, Swan, Abbott Hockey and even Turnbull put together. Many economists regard this with chagrin, if not slack-jawed horror, but it's true. What he lacks and needs is a reputation for guts, which we will all need to make best use of such fortune as has befallen us now. If he is going to announce his run for Prime Minister, Costello has to announce it from atop the prone but warm body of a leading politician (from either side). Until he does that he'll be a bits-and-pieces person for the rest of his life, like most of us.

Abbott delenda est

There was a Roman Senator named Cato the Elder (no relation) who ended every speech he made, on any subject, with the phrase: "Carthago delenda est" (Carthage must be destroyed). Carthage was the main superpower rival to Rome at the time, and once the Romans finally got around to destroying it Rome became the dominant power in its region for hundreds of years.

For anyone who wants the Australian political system to be different to the way it is, this is the attitude that you have to take: Abbott must be destroyed. Abbott is the problem with our political system: not Gillard, not the independents or the Greens, and not even the dead-men-walking Slipper and Thomson.

Certainly, Liberal numbers men know this. Political parties appoint whips to ensure that MPs/Senators vote in line with their leader's wishes. The Deputy Liberal Whip in the House of Reps and the Liberal Senate Whip have each been rolled, a direct attack on the authority of the leader and a sign that real power in the Liberal Party is exercised by rightwing factional bosses, not the leader. That's why Abbott is not the solution to the Liberals' problem, but part of the problem itself.

Today of all days, Liberal powerbrokers with any sense for their party would hold off with the minor task of replacing Helen Kroger as Liberal Senate Whip. To delay would keep media focus on the government, its budget and attendant scandals, and Kroger could have stood down after the Budget. The fact that she has to be replaced now can only mean that the powerbrokers want Abbott to be seen to be dancing to their tune rather than the reverse.

Senators Cormann and Bernardi and non-members of Federal Parliament like Nick Minchin and David Clarke have usurped the role of the whips in the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party. Time was that Chris Pyne played a similar role for moderates, but there are two problems with this: a) moderate liberalism is essentially meaningless in the modern Liberal Party and b) Pyne is a bit too busy with Jamie right now to play intra-party games.

Every difference of opinion between Abbott and the factional bosses has been resolved in favour of the latter - every one. This was true of John Howard in the 1980s, but by the time he came back in 1995 he demanded, and got, the factional players to bend to his will. Once he did that Howard had the combination of goodwill and awe from the Liberal Party that a leader needs to achieve big things (like beating Paul Keating). Abbott is no Howard ad is not entitled to be taken at his word, but it suits Liberal factional leaders to use him as a merkin. Once the media realise that they will cover him differently.

When Abbott complains that Labor has "cooked the books" with the budget, it is part of a campaign to make the nation feel the way that Liberals feel - that they ran a good government that was swindled out of office by trickery. Part of this is imported tactics from the US Republicans and it will be fascinating to see what the Liberals learn from Mitt Romney's (ultimately unsuccessful) campaign this year.

Liberals are pleased that the polls are good but Abbott gets no credit for that. If they slip even slightly, Liberals will turn on him and he isn't big enough to demand that everyone pull in the same direction.

One of the reasons why Hawke and Keating did so well was that they messed with the heads of their opponents. Hawke had the measure of Peacock and '80s Howard. When Hewson outflanked him in economic policy, and without Keating by his side, he was finished. Keating got on top of Hewson, he toyed with Downer and he made Howard work and sweat for everything he got. Labor had the ability to mess with the Liberals' heads, and once they lost that ability they lost everything.

Howard had the measure of Beazley, Crean and (eventually) Latham. Rudd had his measure, never the reverse. Rudd had Nelson's measure too, but so did plenty of others: it was part of his charm.

Gillard can fend off Abbott, as her legislative and policy record demonstrates. Lawyers are taught that they have to work with whomever the other side puts up, and must maintain a veneer of professional cordiality with those against whom they engage in professional conflict. She doesn't realise that she doesn't have to just accept whomever the other side put up; she has to destroy whoever would lead the other side against her to take her job. She has to take it personally: there was a brief flash of that when she was annoyed at Abbott for accusing her of siding against Ashby's rights at work, but she can't only react.

Labor people can fret about their party's polling results, and whether or not this or that policy might be trimmed or reframed, but this will not bring about the change that all the "W(h)ither Labor?" witterers are seeking. What will bring about that change for Labor is for Abbott's gibbering critique to be invalidated, and that can only happen if he is denied the platform that he currently has.

A good budget tonight will be part of that, with grown-up economic and other policies outflanking the adolescent gibbering to which the Coalition is reduced when confronted with real policy debate that can't simply be flicked away. The slowly-building wider narrative that Abbott is going to cut social services and shovel money at billionaires in "compensation" is a good start, but what may eventually become the crush of a constrictor looks now like a swish of a feather boa. Time to ramp it up against Abbott.

Those who think the Liberals' problems will all be solved by a switch to Turnbull, Hockey, Brough or whomever else have to factor in the tightening factional grip over who gets admitted to the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, let alone what they do there. Whether the title of "leader" is held by Abbott, or by any of the guys in the preceding sentence or whomever else you like, is only of interest to journalists and other dilettantes. The next Liberal Prime Minister will be the one who stands on the forecourt of Parliament House, picks up the likes of Cormann and Minchin (not just their delegates) by the ears and drop-kicks them into the lake. Anyone else is just a seat-warmer. Abbott has proven already that he can't and won't do the job; he has already failed, and any polls to the contrary can be safely ignored.

Labor need to develop the ability to mess with the Liberals' heads. Craig Emerson comes closest to this: he niggles the Liberals and can outflank them on economic policy, but talking points hold him back; he should be liberated from the lines in order to land some telling blows. Greg Combet has flashes of it when he's particularly irritated but this happens all too rarely. Albanese is not quite dormant but he is past his most intense. Conroy and Shorten can do it but they'd rather an internal Labor stoush any day. Gillard has to be both Prime Ministerially above-the-fray and, as part of the sexism that hasn't been worked out of her role yet, has to be whiter-than-white Calpurnia-style. Swan made a start with the billionaires but he hasn't really chained the Liberals to them; again, he's a factional player and despite a long career in politics he hasn't got any Liberal scalps to speak of.

Labor people need to demonstrate mastery over the Coalition. There is no better demonstration of dominance than to see someone like Helen Kroger, recently a major player in Melbourne, limping and bleeding at the hands of lesser operators like Fifield and Ryan. Complaining, like Gillard does, won't do it; only shirtfronting them, publicly revealing that the Coalition don't know what they're talking about and can't do a better job than Labor, will get the desired effect.

It's often said that Tony Abbott is Labor's greatest asset, but he isn't. Labor's best assets have to come from within its ranks or there is no point voting for it, no point joining it or in any way supporting them. The Australian economy is doing better than most but not as well as it could; and Abbott's self-seeking cloud of FUD is a depressant on the economy like this country has never seen. Lift that cloud and watch the country come to life.

This isn't something you can delegate. If Whitlam had been brought down by Snedden, or any Liberal other than Fraser, then Fraser would never have been PM. If Hawke had dispatched Hewson as he had his two more politically formidable predecessors, or had Dawkins/Beazley/someone else stepped up and done so, Keating might never have become PM. A Prime Minister who can see Rudd off twice - more than John Howard could ever do - lacks neither the wit nor the courage necessary to deal with The Situation. Abbott fans know it in their bones and dread the possibility that this - and they - might be exposed.

A Prime Minister who sets about wiping Abbott off the political map will not only have the power to get things done but be seen to get them done, and get credit for them, and lift the polls against a demoralised opposition that would not be able to set the agenda as it does today. The fact that the Coalition agenda consists almost entirely of Craig Thomson (blowback ensures they can't talk about Slipper) is a testament to Abbott and an indictment upon the rest of his party.

Gillard has to step up, otherwise, all the hard work of government becomes hostage to dreadful, Walkley-winning shite like this, over and over again; people will do something desperate like voting for Abbott just to make it stop. If Gillard pole-axes Abbott all the comments about her fashion sense disappear: she could wear whatever the hell she likes, and what's more she'd be copied. Polls, challenges, all that crap goes by the board once Abbott is removed from the equation. The only way to change the game is to make voting for Abbott a non-option, persuading even people who hate Gillard that the Coalition would be worse, rather than the benefit of the doubt it gets (and relies upon) now: Abbott delenda est.

Abbott and Slipper 2: The Tar Baby

For those who came in late:

• The Coalition had long regarded Peter Slipper as a problem and were managing him out;
• To the surprise of nobody, he managed himself out to the incidental benefit of Gillard and Labor;
• The Coalition resolved to make Slipper Labor's problem, ignoring his long history in their ranks but armed with in-depth knowledge of the man and his weaknesses (much like Labor did with Colston in 1997); and
• At the start of this week - this very week just ended - the Coalition had Labor by the throat. The government's good work in giving some form to the NDIS and some sound economic figures seemed undone by developments in the Thomson and Slipper cases. A government can survive a perception of being dumb and incompetent, but not one of being venal and sleazy.

That was last week, this is now.

The whole Coalition critique of the government depends upon the implication that it would do better were it to win office. Despite what Michelle Grattan might declare in the course of her anti-Gillard jihad, the Ashby-Pyne-Brough shenanigans overshadow any legal findings that come out of the sexual harassment case. Ashby went into Slipper's office as an LNP man and whatever else happened to him, Ashby continued as  an LNP man while working there. Sexual harassment cases are resolved in favour of the plaintiff only when the plaintiff has unimpeachable bona fides; let's see what might happen before a court, if the case makes it that far.

Like all politicians, Abbott makes himself available to the media when it suits him. Unlike most politicians, he doesn't seem to have much else to do other than court the media. Unlike many senior politicians (and in contrast to his main opponent, the Prime Minister) Abbott turns tail and walks away from press conferences on the rare occasions when he is asked tough questions. This is what he did this week when put on the spot over Ashby (it's increasingly Ashby that is the focus of this case, not Slipper). Gillard faces down hostile media packs who talk over her and ask questions that assume everyone accepts the Coalition line. Abbott, like Sir Robin, bravely ran away; and not for the first time.

It's one of the most basic tenets of PR not to make yourself the story when your opponent is under attack, but for the Coalition it's way too late for that.

Abbott has made a whole lot of not-quite-promises about a lot of things; not quite promised to bring in a paid parental leave tax, not quite promised to support a US military presence in Darwin and not quite promised to turn refugee boats toward Indonesia, to name three. The two issues on which he has gone strongest and hardest, and on which his reputation most depends, are the political destruction of two men: Craig Thomson and Peter Slipper. If Abbott can't wipe those two guys off the political map, what hope does he have against an incumbent PM with a long and strong legislative achievement (yes, including an unpopular tax that seems to have already hit its maximum depth of unpopularity)?

Neither man might get off without a blemish, but mere smear is no longer enough to knock them out of such a high-stakes game. For Abbott to succeed, for him to have the momentum that will carry him into government, he must be seen to have forced these two men out of politics. He must make the case that his government would be a cut above the incumbent. To fail at the first of these, as he has, is to fail at the second and more telling. If people no longer believe an Abbott government would be no better or even worse than the incumbents, we may as well not even speak of such an eventuality and congratulate the Gillard government on its re-election.

For Thomson, any action against him will be taken by the police and/or other apolitical authorities. He's been hung out to dry by Labor but Abbott has attacked him day after day for four years, almost denying him the ability to be present at his daughter's birth. Journalists who reported that an exiled Thomson increased Abbott's chances did not understand what was going on, and were therefore no help to those to whom they were supposedly reporting.

The action against Slipper looks increasingly like a put-up job by his political opponents. The political force of both the sexual harassment case and the cabcharge thing have been all but blunted. The Coalition have nobody who could do Slipper over slowly and carefully and utterly like Faulkner and Ray did Colston. Will we see more fabrications, like Justice Kirby's driver records? Will Abbott end up crying wolf when he should be one?  Abbott promised to make Slipper Labor's problem; he deployed the big guns but his targets are still standing. Even Thomson isn't Labor's problem any more. What now?

Abbott won't collapse straight away, but make no mistake: his authority is blunted. Given that he's no great shakes in terms of policy, he must succeed in personal destruction or fail utterly. That's why hand-wringing pieces like this claiming Abbott's tactics are "dangerous for democracy" is hysterical nonsense. Voters have always had and exercised the ability to know bullshit, to call it by its name and to call out the bullshitter; to claim that people are so feeble as to be led along by Abbott and the Murdoch press is to be patronising to the point where you can't represent those you would govern.

Speaking of patronising, who is Phillip Coorey trying to kid with this?

The Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, blamed the NSW branch [sic] for costing him the 2010 election because it was late in preselecting candidates for key seats. This time, the branch [sic] is proceeding apace by selecting candidates for marginal Labor seats.

Timing is important, but it isn't everything. Party membership might be declining in NSW but there is still more than one branch in that state.

Look at the example that Coorey uses to open his argument: Peter Hendy, poster-boy for the smug and abrasive apparatchik. Hendy is a creature of Canberra but he lacks the guts to run there. Instead, he's up against Mike Kelly, more than just the "Labor frontbencher" with which Coorey dismisses him. Followers of Kelly's Twitter feed know that he's indefatigable in that electorate, "... where the pine-clad ridges raise | Their torn and rugged battlements on high, | Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze | At midnight in the cold and frosty sky". How much time Hendy has to press his case matters very little when you consider those who have met the man describe him as either insipid or nasty; those who are yet to do so, even those who want a Coalition government, aren't exactly in for a treat. It's one thing to give advice but quite another to live or die on the quality of it. For a start, Hendy should but won't be strong enough to reject campaigning assistance from Peter Phelps.

In 2010 the Liberal candidate was David Gazard: much more personable than Hendy but cut from the same staffer-consultant (some call it "hack") cloth. Kelly won a huge swing against Gazard (one of the few Labor candidates to do so in that election) and will almost certainly do so against Hendy. What lessons can the Liberals be said to have learned from the last election?

By the middle of June, the Victorian Liberals would have preselected candidates for Corangamite, Chisholm, Deakin, La Trobe and Jagajaga, the latter of which is held by the Family and Community Services Minister, Jenny Macklin.

Yes, but which candidates? The leading candidate for LaTrobe is Jason Wood, the former MP unfairly bagged here but who was so cruelly abandoned by the party machine in 2010 that it would cause more problems for the Victorian Liberals than it would solve were he to realise his dream. The Victorian Liberals don't have the talent pool to staff a state government, their Senate team is a joke, and those who hold their safe House seats aren't nearly as good as they think they are - let alone being as good as they need to be.

This week has shown that whenever Abbott gets an advantage over Gillard and Labor, he blows it. Any attack on the Budget will be blunted by his failure to dispose of low-hanging, rotten fruit like Thomson and Slipper. The idea that Abbott might fancy his chances against Treasurer Swan, Prime Minister Gillard or the Member for Eden-Monaro is fantasy - fantasy for him, and delusion for those who follow him so closely that their noses end up out of joint (not just brown) when he turns tail and walks away from those he would purport to lead.

Wordcloud for this blog

Thanks to wordle.com:

Lilley-livered

Clive Palmer won't succeed in his bid to become Federal MP for Lilley. It doesn't matter how much money he has or what the polls say. He won't do it because the banal activity of campaigning would bore him, and that lack of attentiveness would be detectable even by the most disengaged voter. Any voter who had their doubts about Wayne Swan would be wary of sending a message that they'd prefer the country to be run by someone who regards politics and all other activities as sundry to business.

Whether it's the on-again-off-again float of Resourcehouse in Hong Kong (why will no finance journo look into his skittishness on a matter in which billions of dollars are at stake?), Gold Coast United or his proposal for Not The A-League, Palmer is an absolute dilettante at any activity which does not directly involve mining.

Mr Palmer said there was a need to lift standards in Parliament.

“I think Tony Abbott’s a great leader,” he said.

Now there's a non-sequitur for you, an indication of poor judgment. Look at the performance of Parliament and you cannot make the claim that Abbott, Pyne and other poachers of parliamentary standards will become gamekeepers of parliamentary propriety.

Swan was first elected to represent Lilley in 1993, following a retiring Labor MP in what was then considered a safe seat. The 1996 election saw the biggest swing against Labor in Queensland since Federation; Swan lost Lilley but won it back in 1998 and has held it since.

After 1996 Swan took to the streets, the community organisations and the homes of people in Lilley, working hard and applying a lifetime of campaigning skill to the task. He had been Queensland state secretary of the ALP and was highly regarded for his campaigning skill; had he lost then he'd be history, and [insert counterfactual historical frolic here].

Liberals use safe Labor seats like Lilley to blood inexperienced but promising candidates, or else give long-serving locals a reward. While Palmer has his go that role is closed to the LNP and its aspirants. After the 2010 Federal election and the 2012 state election I'd be surprised if the LNP can uncover vast reserves of yet-untapped talent. Palmer is likely to find the local LNP branches in Lilley to be beneath the level at which he operates, and even if he does humour them at first he didn't get where he is today by listening to people like them.

None of the paid shills he brings in will compensate for the lack of an authentic presence in that community. If he alienates local LNP branch members then his credibility is shot from the outset.

Bob Hawke built a reputation over decades as a highly effective campaigner. One slip in the late 1980s, referring to an old man who talked back to him as a "silly old bugger", stayed with him as an indication that this legendary quality was on the slide. Palmer has no such reputation as a campaigner and it is hard to imagine him running a campaign of such discipline with ordinary members of the public that he is never anything but courteous and sensitive to them at all times, and that he can demonstrate the ability to respectfully disagree with someone.

Despite what the media will tell you, very little of the activity involved in political campaigning is glamorous, or even particularly interesting. The most you can get from a person is their vote; not some huge opportunity, just their vote and with enough of those, all you end up with is something Palmer thinks he's entitled to already. The sheer amount of effort required, day after day, and the sheer lack of reward, will discourage Palmer. Like teaching or nursing, grassroots campaigning is all about public service and if the intrinsic rewards don't keep you going, or if you can't even fake it, people will notice and your campaign is shot.

I've worked with plenty of dud Liberal candidates who thought they were pretty good in other walks of life, and I made a point of targeting pikers at preselection time, building a reputation as both a whinger and someone who put in the effort in election campaigns. There are few worse sins in politics than being small-r right. If I was a Liberal preselector in Lilley I'd be against Palmer and copping plenty of flak in the process, mainly from people who made themselves scarce when hard work was called for, and it would make no difference at all.

Yes, Clive Palmer is a political animal, but so was the only other Australian businessman who can claim greater success beyond this country than he: Rupert Murdoch, who at one stage aspired to a Country Party seat in the NSW Legislative Council. Party discipline will kill Palmer, and the credibility of those who dare to impose it on him. Like Murdoch, Palmer will find other interests more than compensate for never having occupied the parliamentary benches.

That's why it's Michelle Grattan who is cracking hardy when she observes from far-off Canberra:

Swan's seat of Lilley is on 3.2 per cent. Even before the Queensland election it was dicey; now it is potentially diabolical for the ALP.

Not all seats swing evenly, and successive elections do not have the ratchet-like effect that simplistic analysis would have, and besides ... why does it fall to me to point this out to someone who should know better?

It's one thing to expect Palmer to disown his wacky comments about the CIA or whatever, but he will have a harder time fighting off the credibility-leeching attentions of conspiracy theory nutcases. They will see him, if not as their most prominent ally, then certainly as their sugar-daddy. Palmer will hate that but there is nothing he can do about it, which he'll hate even more.

Lilley is within metropolitan Brisbane and therefore he would face little threat from Katter's agrarian insurgency (although it would be interesting to see him deal with duopoly as the reason for high supermarket prices, and what government might do about it). Palmer would, however, have to play nice with those who sit with the Nationals in Federal Parliament. One clash with Barnaby over farmers blocking mining exploration and it's COALITION SPLIT SHOCK. The power that Palmer has spent decades building up is covert power and it simply may not withstand the hyper-public nature of a general election campaign.

The fact that Palmer has not announced that he is standing down from his business roles is significant. He hasn't told the ASX and thereby not risked the wrath of the market for distracting his attention away from the challenges facing his business in order to engage in what increasingly looks like an extended practical joke against Wayne Swan.

Even if he does become MP for Lilley, he will be one of a number of backbenchers from seats that are unlikely to be retained in 2016. Palmer will rail against the irrelevance of the backbench while those from more humble backgrounds take a longer-term and more measured approach. Imagine Barnaby lording it over him as a Minister. If Abbott promoted Palmer straight into the ministry, he would be unable to resist advancing his own business interests ahead of those of Australia more generally.

If Palmer wants to do one thing and Abbott another, it is Abbott who will be unable to resist. Swan's article on billionaires and his statement today about Palmer owning the LNP in Queensland is all very well: Abbott should be his real target. A political assassin like Paul Keating would have shaped a narrative that Abbott is beholden to Palmer, wrenching an asset off the Coalition and turning it into a weapon aimed directly at its leader's heart. Made successfully, this is a charge that Abbott will not succeed in laughing off or ignoring, even with the supine press gallery we have today: working journalists have made their peace with doing whatever billionaires bid them do for the sake of their jobs.

If Swan produces a cracker budget then you can expect Palmer's business interests to turn his head away from politics much more suddenly than might otherwise be the case. If you can persuade all but the silliest journalists to realise this is the most likely option, there's more hope for that profession than is obvious at the moment.

The NDIS will be - could be - hugely beneficial for our country. Clive Palmer promising to build some boats is not in that league, and all the editors who hold the contrary view and get carried away with it are the real problem with our media - but don't get me started.

While the journosphere will shrug off the prospect of Palmer et al running the country for their benefit, voters will not.

Update 1 May: Greg Baum's most excellent piece on Palmer's topsy-turvy view of the world.

Your responsibilities at work

Ideals may tell us something important about what we would like to be, but compromises tell us who we are.

- Avishai Margalit

The tide will turn against you eventually, but when you have a big win you have two choices. You can coast along, collecting and resting on laurels, or you can knuckle down and do some work. When the tide turns, will you have anything to be proud of, anything to show for your efforts, anything to hand on to those who come after (just as those who came before handed over to you)?

It is not only the incumbent Federal government that is in this position. The Australian union movement built and surfed the crest of a wave with its Your Rights At Work campaign. It got rid of legislation it didn't like, and with it the government that proposed it. Union membership even went up a bit back then, but has since declined (and no, unemployment can't be blamed for that). Greg Combet went into Parliament and was replaced by someone who had all the hallmarks of a governance nerd. Jeff Lawrence maintained the status quo rather than put the boom on a sustainable footing (a criticism that can be made of others holding high office) but the answer to their problem is not another swaggering dickhead - an equal-but-opposite of Tony Abbott - but someone who knows that union activity depends upon a well and tightly run administration. It might not be sexy, and it might not get the adrenaline pumping like standing on a picket line yelling at people doing work you've refused to do, but without sound administration no union activity is possible.

The most successful unions today get this. The Shop Distributive & Allied Employees' Union (SDA) is not extravagantly run but its watching-the-pennies administration make its two major functions possible. First, it acts as a consultancy for the two major retailers to manage downward employee expectations of wages, career paths or even any jobs at all. Second, it enables the leadership to proclaim that its tens of thousands of members all share and support their preoccupations with Pellite Catholic teachings (i.e. a focus on abortion and euthanasia and a blind eye to sexual abuse). The Finance Sector Union and the AMWU are also in the business of managing decline, and the AWU is a conveyor belt for ALP machine men. The CFMEU seems like a make-work scheme for the ABCC.

People who get involved in unions from the shop floor up generally have little interest in becoming directors, yet this is what will increasingly be required of those who would take the union movement forward. The language and history of unions has been that workers are passive creatures to be "organised"; that the union exists for the worker ("your union") whether or not the worker chooses to join it, and they may not choose to join a union other than the one designated to "cover" them. This attitude is in stark contrast to the more inclusive rhetoric of other service organisations. One could overlook this as some harmless eccentricity if unions were better able to make their case to workers in industries that did not exist 40 years ago, or to those whose tenure in a job (or even a particular industry) is tenuous and shifting. The people who built the union movement in the decades before the First World War would have been able to work through this dilemma, but the managerial class that the unions built for themselves over the past quarter century are as stumped as the bewildered former blue-collar workers who preceded them.

Unions, like other organisations, require leadership and administration and some degree of stability. Unlike other organisations, unions have to allow for the possibility that members will rise up and demand something different than what the managers/administrators want. This frisson of democracy might be part of the excitement of the idea of unionism but it isn't something that union administrations need worry about on a day-to-day basis, any more than corporate managers do with shareholders. Those who dread the accountability of union members being equal to that of company directors can take comfort from the patchy record of enforcement by corporate regulators.

As ACTU President and Prime Minister, Bob Hawke took on the Builders' Labourers Federation, because the operations of that union only fed every anti-union prejudice. His successor Simon Crean took on the similarly noxious Painters and Dockers. Ged Kearney's Presidency of the ACTU has been one of small wins, with welfare workers; and the whole Help yrSelf Union (HSU) thing certainly clouds, if not overwhelms, that legacy. Kearney does not have to accept whoever her constituent unions throw up, she should take a more active role in shunting out unsuitable people and intervening in unsuitable unions.

That legacy of all-inclusive timidity and inaction leaves you with no defence to this. I stand by the claim that Abbott won't become PM but putting union leaders under the same scrutiny as company directors is the sort of thing that will be introduced by the next Coalition government, whenever and under whomever it comes to office. Thanks to inaction on the part of those who run the union movement, there is no answer nor any alternative to that proposal. Labor will introduce something half-arsed along those lines and the next Coalition government will complete the job.

Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten could do for the professionalism of union leaders what he started to do for financial planners, but he's been sidelined by this. It has derailed his ability to disguise as a concern for unions as a whole what is really a long-running factional spat with Kathy Jackson. Those of us with a relatively long political memory remember Abbott doing the same thing to John Howard, Peter Costello, Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull: he denied hearing the exact words but protested his undying support for the leader. Journos lapped that up, or at best let it pass, but for some reason Shorten has copped all at once the consistent scrutiny that might have done for Tony Abbott before it came to this.

Abbott and Slipper

Slipper's mistake here was to assume that Abbott is his own man. Any other Liberal leader would have told the Queensland LNP to back away from one of his supporters, but not the Situation. Abbott's performance is the issue here.

Let us not underestimate what a prize dingo Abbott is. When Abbott failed at the priesthood it was Turnbull who got him a job. When Turnbull stumbled in 2009, Abbott was right there with knife in hand.

Abbott started off by pointing out that Slipper's problems weren't Gillard's doing. As soon as the Prime Minister left the country he changed his tune, blaming Gillard for Slipper's antics directly. In the absence of the Prime Minister, those ministers who gave Rudd such a going-over should be giving Abbott the same treatment. Abbott respects strength and if you don't demonstrate it by smacking him around he gets cheeky, confusing good manners with weakness. He began to increase his media output beyond the tightly-scripted Daily Stunt, feeling heady enough to give a long-form interview.

Being comfortable with and proficient at handling experienced journalists in long-form interviews is a pre-requisite for any senior politician. Abbott is crap at long-form interviews. He can trot out his talking points, but if he is interrupted or challenged he just weakly repeats the interviewer's name, or tells a lie. The day following any such attempt includes a story focused on whatever lie or gaffe had tumbled out of his face, which almost certainly reinforces his nervy and risk-averse handlers' perception that their man should shirk the gauntlet that stands between him and the Lodge.

Note that Abbott chose Chris Uhlmann as his interlocutor. Abbott is the only politician Uhlmann interviews whom he does not talk over or interrupt. Every one of his other interview subjects cop this treatment, along with begged questions and beef-witted assumptions that have to be batted away before the question can be answered; Uhlmann's assumptions are clearly Abbott's assumptions, which is why he was content to hear Abbott in respectful silence. Uhlmann's treatment of Abbott compared with that of others is observable, objective fact, and it belies his ambitions (and those of his employer) to be regarded as an effective senior journalist.

Even so, Abbott's performance was still rubbish. He had little to say about the prospect of welfare cuts from his shadow treasurer, little to say about tobacco plain-packaging or changes to aged care (despite having been a former Health and Ageing Minister), little to say about other issues of great public importance. But my goodness, wasn't he voluble about some stray cabcharge vouchers and some sleazy comments. He's had a lot more to say against the pre-parliamentary antics Craig Thomson than he has against the in-office performance of Wayne Swan. That shows you where he's most comfortable; not grappling with the big issues, but down with rorting and rooting.

Slipper knows enough about Parliament both to uphold its dignity as the most effective Speaker in years, as well as knowing how to bend the rules to his advantage. It is tempting to turn a blind eye to the latter in order to secure the former, particularly when similar misdemeanours were brushed aside in 1997 by the Howard government (and again, apparently, in 2003 by Slipper himself). James Hunter Ashby is unconvincing as anything but a Liberal stool-pigeon, and it's hard to imagine his case going much beyond he-said-he-said and case dismissed.

Speaking of stool-pigeons, there is probably a Walkley in it for Steve Lewis to publish what was fed to him. Lewis should not only remember the allegations surrounding former High Court Justice Kirby allegedly using official vehicles to cruise for gay prostitutes, but give some consideration as to whether or not something similar is going on here. Lewis has no excuse for not joining the dots between Ashby, Godwin Grech and the Kirby allegations, and wondering if a Coalition government might not bring more sleaze than less.

It may well be an organisational problem for Lewis' employer, however, and to see that you don't need to go as far as his Chairman's testimony in London. This article and cartoon by two men who should know better, even though they work for Murdoch, is just sad:

Peter Slipper would not be able to make an appearance, official or otherwise, without attracting a barrage of titters and knowing smirks.

A bit like Bill Clinton, twice-elected President of the United States, eh Malcolm? Like Bob Hawke? It's easy to get all upset about the homophobia in that piece but in an age of widespread public support for the Sydney Mardi Gras and same-sex marriage, homophobia is not the vote-winner/newspaper-seller that News Ltd executives still clearly imagine it to be.

Farr and Leak only remind us that you can't have homophobia without misogyny, and in an environment where sneer-at-the-queer has free rein a woman in high office has no chance. That's News Ltd's real target here: the Speaker is collateral damage aiming at the PM.

Slipper's only chance is to abandon the starchy outrage that he has shown so far and become some sort of old roué, toward whom everyone is awake-up but who is not only forgiven but regarded quite fondly for all that. Such a position would appear, however, to be beyond him. I hope Slipper returns to the chair and chucks the bums out until they learn to behave.

The irony for the Coalition is that a quiet confidence is far more unsettling to a government than rambunctious points-of-order, fatuous interjections and general chaos. They learned that themselves in 1995, they witnessed it again when Rudd flung it at them in 2007, and their current leader witnessed both at first hand. The fact that they have not learned this now only shows that the Coalition is led badly, indeed inadequately, by the incumbent. Against such a deficit of decency and common sense, whether or not Abbott is punctilious with his expenses and/or his private life is really neither here nor there.